


The Taste of Your Name

by sv_you_know_who_I_am



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Post-Uprooted, Relationship Study, Sensuality, multi-chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-29 22:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11450364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sv_you_know_who_I_am/pseuds/sv_you_know_who_I_am
Summary: Sarkan has returned to the Valley, but Agnieszka is not so quick to forgive and forget, despite her own happiness at seeing him again. When he requests her help in repairing his tower, she agrees--but they are surprised to find that it is difficult to pick up where they left off. Only a familiar spell thought lost will be able to restore understanding between them, but can they retrieve it from within the gaping abyss where it vanished, or has everything fallen apart after all?(Chapters 3 and 7 have an M rating.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for this fandom, and I'm so happy to be here! I've already read some of the other amazing fics on the archive, and I'm hoping this will fit in as well. I'm not sure how long it will be, but I'm looking forward to exploring these characters and this world a bit. Thanks for reading!

To say that Sarkan was displeased that I hadn’t so much as touched the tower to repair it in the year he’d been gone would be an understatement, but it was no less than I expected. He snorted and huffed and scowled when I told him that I’d been spending my time in the Wood instead. I pretended not to notice his magic prodding up against me, subtly testing me for corruption like those curious bumblebee illusions we had summoned together so long ago had explored the rosebush. I pretended not to be utterly delighted by the feel of it, the presence of his magic, or the sign of his concern that would never show on his face.

We stood now at the edge of the circle in the village, watching the fire dance in our usual companionable silence. I didn’t want to push him—I was simply happy he was here. I’d asked enough of him for the night, after all. Meeting my mother and my family had been . . . about as awkward as anyone could have imagined. My mother had been startlingly gracious, but of course I had told her everything except the finer details of our intimacy. Though I hadn’t told her, I supposed she suspected as she eyed us with her wise gaze. My father was obtuse in the way most fathers are in the matters of their daughters’ adult relationships, but I forgave him for it. In fact, I was grateful.

I kept the meeting short to spare everyone’s feelings, but I lingered with Sarkan near the fire nonetheless, part out of a hope to make the people of the village comfortable with him. I scolded myself all the while—I had no assurance he wouldn’t disappear again the next morning. It was dangerous enough letting myself become too invested in his presence.

“Have you a place to stay?” I asked quietly, unsure of what I would say if he said no.

“An inn in Olshanka,” he replied curtly, “seeing as my tower is still a ruin.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I had other priorities.”

He looked sideways at me, but I couldn’t read the shape of his mouth as he said, “Evidently.” It sounded like scorn, but . . . there was something else there. I decided not to dwell on it. “I assume you’ve returned home to live with your parents?”

“I visit now and again,” I answered, “but I have my own place.” I lifted a braid off my shoulder, which was already starting to unravel despite my mother’s best efforts. “Dragon Girls can never really return home.”

His mouth opened slightly as though to demand what on earth I meant, but his eyes glinted in the fire as he quickly pieced it together. “It seems to _me_ you never left. I had thought to see you appear in Kralia at least once, if only to poke your nose into other people’s business.”

I scoffed. “I’ve had quite enough of _other people’s business_ for a lifetime.”

“You’re a witch,” Sarkan reminded me. “You’ll live centuries. I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

A stone settled in my stomach at the reminder. I looked around at the people of my village—at Danka, at my parents, the children. They would age, and die, while I would go ever on, caring for their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and on . . . despite the time I’d had to think about this, I still couldn’t fathom how Alosha had been so comfortable with it. Practice, I supposed.

The scent of the harvest fire turned from comforting to acrid in my nose, and I turned around to go home for the night.

Sarkan caught my wrist, and my heart quickened at the press of his thumb on the tender inside skin. “You’re just going?”

I bit back the retort; that’s what _he_ had done, after all. He’d just gone. “It’s best I do.” For me, and for everyone else.

He dropped my wrist. “Before you go,” he said, his eyes narrowing just slightly and his jaw tensing, as though preparing to say something difficult, “I wondered if I might see you at the tower. If it doesn’t _inconvenience_ you too terribly.”

I blinked. “Why should I go back there?” 

Something flashed in his eyes and I realized the words hadn’t sounded the way I’d intended them. But I didn’t care too much. “The . . . abyss. From when we lost _The Summoning_. It’s still there. I’ve been researching for months, trying to figure out how to get rid of it. But it’s impossible. It might call for your . . . _peculiar_ approach to magic.”

My brow furrowed as I puzzled out his words. “Are you . . . are you asking for my help?”

Sarkan’s nostrils flared in indignation. “Of course not.”

I shrugged and started to walk away again. “All right, then.”

I made it several paces further into the dark before he caught up to me. “What on earth is _that_ supposed to mean, you intolerable girl?”

I kept walking. “You’re not asking for my help. So I can go home.”

“You’re walking straight toward the Wood!”

“What’s your point?”

“Agnieszka.” My gut clenched as my name spilled from his lips—the first time he’d spoken it since arriving. It was enough to stop me short and allow him to overtake me, standing between me and the Wood. We were well away from the festivities now, shrouded in the dark. The only glimmer of light came from the flash of firelight on the silver of his coat. I could barely make out his face, except to see . . . _terror_ in his dark eyes. “Don’t go back in there, you madwoman.” The unwitting softness of his voice made the insult miss its mark.

As did the way he took my face between his hands and kissed me.

I didn’t kiss him back. I knew he was only doing it to throw me off, to distract me or somehow convince me to see things his way. Perhaps to make me think of the way things had been before he had left. But I wasn’t the same Agnieszka he’d abandoned here a year ago. Though I had missed him—and though I had imagined kissing him again far more often than I ought to have—I was fully capable of being my own person, my own witch, without his magic or his way of thinking.

He pulled back, his brow knitted in confusion. Had he expected me to reciprocate immediately, when he’d left so abruptly after we’d made it out of the Wood last year? Though I understood his reasons for leaving, that didn’t make it hurt less. The old Agnieszka might have eagerly accepted his kiss, perhaps even pushed farther, but now? I had other concerns. This time, it was _my_ wall holding his magic, his being, at arm’s length. I could tell that he didn’t know what to make of it.

“It’s not how it was,” I said, referring not only to the Wood but to everything, everyone else.

“I’d heard the stories, but didn’t trust them,” Sarkan said, disbelief coloring his words. “Agnieszka of Dvernik, Cleanser of the Wood. It seemed too mad, even for you.”

I didn’t have to ask if he’d spoken to Kasia, who would have told him the plain truth of it. He likely hadn’t approached her, either out of dismissiveness or the reminder off the Wood and the Valley. “Is that what they call me?” I asked. My tone took on a caustic edge. “Perhaps you can return and correct the story—Agnieszka of Dvernik, Mad Witch of the Valley.” My shoulders sagged in weariness. “Just let me go home.” Words I would have never dared to speak to him before, even when he’d snatched me from everything I’d ever known.

Sarkan’s anger sparked. “The last time I saw you in that Wood you were swallowed into a heart-tree and almost _died!_ ”

My heart clenched uncomfortably. I understood now, why he was getting in my way. I remembered those feelings of dread. At night, I still sometimes saw Janos’s head rolling at my feet or the heart-tree crawling over Sarkan’s arms and face. But . . . it wasn’t like that now. And he wouldn’t believe me. I could have sympathy, but without trust on his part . . . I couldn’t be softened entirely.

I flexed my jaw and looked beyond him into the tree line. I saw the glowing eyes of a couple of walkers there, anticipating my return home. “I’ll come to the tower tomorrow,” I said.

“What?” Sarkan demanded.

“Let me go now, and I’ll come to the tower tomorrow to prove that I’m not completely mad and things aren’t as you remember them.” It seemed a fair trade, an easy way to prove to him that I was fine on my own.

He considered it in silence for a long time, but then he nodded. “I’ll have the cleansing ritual ready.”

I huffed in indignation, but it was clearly the only way he’d feel better. I finally pushed past him and walked further into the dark. “Good night, Sarkan,” I said over my shoulder, his name crackling like a bonfire on my tongue despite my mood. “Sleep well.”

And I left him standing there, just as he’d left me.


	2. Chapter 2

Sarkan was waiting for me the next morning at the edge of the ruined walls surrounding his tower—the walls we had built together. His arms were folded across his chest. He was wearing a different jacket than the night before; this one was emerald green with similar silver embroidery. I, of course, looked like I’d rolled about on the forest floor before arriving, but I had stopped caring long ago. Even Sarkan’s incredulous expression as he looked me over did not move me to self-consciousness. It was familiar, instead. The first chord of a song that had been sung in my childhood. I tried not to love it too much.

This time, I didn’t pretend not to notice as Sarkan’s magic prodded at me and examined me. We hadn’t yet spoken a word to each other, only held one another’s glare as I indulged his paranoia and proved that I wasn’t corrupted as he feared.

When his magic withdrew, there was something sorrowful in the air, and I knew he still didn’t trust that I was myself. After seeing what we had seen with Queen Hanna, I understood his mistrust. But he had also seen Kasia, knew that the Wood could be left behind, that corruption could be overcome. Whatever he saw in me wasn’t enough to convince him, and that hurt more than a thousand cutting remarks about my appearance.

“We have to go in through the tunnels,” Sarkan said abruptly, breaking our silence. “The front doors are a complete wreck.”

“And the abyss is just beyond them,” I added. He nodded tersely and began to lead me through the rubble down below the earth. We skirted away from the path that led to the tombs; neither of us wanted to face what we had seen down there, and there was no point in revisiting it. That story had ended; the book had closed.

Instead, we found a tunnel leading toward the kitchens. These too were a wreck, and there was a faint smell of rotted food about the place, though small animals had long invaded and cleared out most of it. We passed to the cellar, and as we walked through in silence, I paused and inhaled sharply when I saw a stain on the wall and floor near one of the cabinets. Though it was a year old by now, I recognized my blood. My hand lifted of its own accord to faintly trace the scar just above my right breast. Of all the horrors of that day, being struck by an arrow had been the least of them and the one I still could barely recall.

Sarkan glanced over his shoulder when he heard me gasp, and his eyes followed mine to the stain. The skin around his mouth paled as his lips drew into a tight line and his nostrils flared. “Don’t be squeamish,” he said, though his eyes held anything but derision. He turned and continued onward. I followed him in silence.

I was strong from spending most of my days wandering about the Wood, so the stairs did not wind me as they once had. Despite time away, I knew exactly how many flights of stairs to expect before we reached the main floor where the abyss would be waiting. Sarkan paused at the door as though bracing himself. I didn’t judge him—I was bracing myself, too.

He pushed open the door with his palm and stepped through, holding it open for me with the tip of his finger. I climbed over the rubble accumulated near the door and added dust to the dirt on my calf-length skirts.

My lips pursed as I examined the room. It was . . . oddly quiet. I had expected a wind, or whirling magic, perhaps drawing something into the blackness that waited through the cracks in the floor. Seeing how the cracks radiated out from the dais upon which Sarkan’s chair had once sat, I wondered how on earth he’d been able to carry me past it without both of us falling in. I could hardly remember.

I realized I was staring at him the same moment he did. “What are you looking at me for, you dolt?” He gestured vaguely at the scene before us. “ _Glean._ ”

I blinked at his use of my word, the word I had used to describe what magic was like for me. I perched on a block of stone that had once been a pillar at the edge of the room. I crossed my legs butterfly-style and perched an elbow on one knee. I rested my chin in my palm and simply sat to stare at the void.

“You look ridiculous,” Sarkan muttered, shaking his head, but he moved to another part of the room and took up a more dignified version of my position on a different piece of rubble.

I cast out my magic, letting it grow away from me like my own set of roots. The tendrils of it poked around the edges of the abyss, the craters, the cracks, testing and tasting it. It recoiled from some parts and curled up near others. Soon a tune came to mind and I closed my eyes to hum it as my magic got to know this new clearing. I didn’t know one note from the next, but I trusted it.

I jolted when one tendril brushed up against Sarkan’s magic, which was making directed assaults from different angles. I could practically feel his mind working it, turning over every piece of evidence and every characteristic, looking for relevant pieces and discarding what he thought unhelpful. I gleaned the bits he left behind, just in case.

I wasn’t sure how long we stayed there, but it was long enough for me to feel stiff and longing for the soft mulch of the Wood. I spooled my magic back into myself and let it settle into me, making a space in myself for the new awareness. When I was finished, I stretched, feeling a satisfied _pop_ in my back.

“Well?” Sarkan demanded. I blinked and looked toward him. We’d been in silence for so long that his voice was jarring to my senses.

“It’s not dangerous,” I said, “yet.” He nodded his agreement. “Where does it go?”

“Nowhere,” Sarkan answered, “and that’s the point. If anything goes in, it simply ceases to exist.”

“You’ve tested this?” I asked.

“In a way,” he said. “In Charovnikov, I experimented in a controlled environment. Anything I tossed in never came out again.”

“You . . . you created an abyss? In the capital?”

“It was a _controlled environment_ ,” Sarkan replied testily. “I used two enchanted objects—neither of them useful for anything else anymore—and manipulated them into a working. Then I . . .” he cleared his throat, “then I destroyed one before the working was complete. The result was something like this, only not quite so pure nor nearly so big.”

“And what did you throw in?” My voice was quiet. I thought I should be horrified by what he was telling me, but I sensed there was something I didn’t quite understand.

“Small things. Buttons, matchsticks, the like. I’d suspended the abyss in the air, so it was obvious when the items didn’t come out the other side again.”

“How did you discern that they weren’t still inside?”

“I attempted every summoning charm I could think of—cantrip and spell and working alike. I had Alosha and The Willow try, too, not that either were keen on helping. There was never any success.”

I frowned. Something didn’t seem quite right about that.

“Why are you making that face?” Sarkan asked.

“If a thing had ceased to exist, wouldn’t you have also forgotten about it?” I asked. My magic hummed under my skin as though agreeing with my words. “I would imagine an abyss that pure would consume magic, as well, but we were still able to complete the _Summoning_ after the book had gone through.”

“You’re not making the slightest bit of sense,” Sarkan said, shaking his head. “I should have known.”

“Known what?” I demanded, my voice rising sharply in volume. It echoed off the wrecked walls of the room. “You’re not even trying to listen! Why would you bother asking for my help if you don’t want to listen to a word I have to say?”

Sarkan gaped at me. “I—”

“I’m hungry,” I interrupted. “I’m going to make lunch.” I whirled and left the way we’d come. I didn’t bother telling him not to follow me. I knew he wouldn’t.

I was embarrassed that tears lined my eyes as I descended downward, but I was furious at the injustice of it. He could call me idiot, dolt, impossible, all he wanted. Those words had no barbs and did not trouble me. But his actions—his dismissiveness of my knowledge and magic, even after all he’d seen me do . . . his lack of belief in me. I had not been a witch for more than a century as he had, but I knew myself well. Even if I could not quite explain it. If he would only give me a _chance_. . .

Perhaps he did not want me here for my magic at all. Perhaps I was simply a set of roots that he was using again to get everything back in order, and then when he was done with me, he’d think no more of me. Just as he’d thought no more of any of the other girls.

It hurt more deeply than I’d ever expected it to.

I used spells to make bread and soup, and I set it on a tray to carry back upstairs. But I paused in the cellar, eyes drawn once more to that bloodstain. I sat on a lonely chair in the room and idly nibbled at the bread as I stared at it. I wasn’t sure how long I stared and nibbled, letting my thoughts untangle themselves, but eventually I heard footsteps thundering down the stairs, Sarkan griping under his breath.

“. . . though you might be considerate enough to bring _me_ some—” I heard him pause on the steps to stare at my back. “Well, that’s macabre,” he remarked.

“Hush, I’m almost finished,” I said absently.

“With _what?_ ”

“Thinking.”

Sarkan grumbled but entered further into the chamber, leaning against a table where I’d set the tray. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him dip his finger into the soup and taste it. At the face he made, I knew it had gone cold.

“An abyss is absence, correct?” I said.

“Yes,” Sarkan said. He sounded annoyed but I could tell he was waiting for the rest. A marked improvement from his attitude earlier.

“Absence is nothingness—no being, no space, no time.” I laced my fingers together and didn’t take my eyes off the bloodstain. “We see traces of these qualities in other spells.”

“In the corruption, you mean,” Sarkan said.

I turned toward him and glared. Something like _relief_ flashed across his features. “No, not just in the corruption. In everyday cantrips and spells. _Vanstalem_ draws clothing out of nowhere, for instance. The stone spell stops time, in a way. There can be no presence without absence.”

I saw Sarkan’s eyes flash in frustration. “You’re stating elementary magic to me,” he said irritably.

“You’re treating this problem like it’s some great mystery, but I don’t think it is,” I said. “I think you have an answer in your reach, but you just don’t know it.”

“Is that right?” Sarkan said with a sneer. The pain in my heart flared, almost as though the injury that had made that bloodstain had reopened. “Then what is the answer, O Cleanser of the Wood?”

I stood from my chair, raining crumbs down on the floor. “I don’t know yet. But I will soon.” I pushed my hair back from my forehead and looked him in the eye as I said, “I’m going home for the night.”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Sarkan exclaimed, pushing himself off the table.

“I am not your apprentice anymore, Sarkan!” I snapped. His name on my tongue made me feel like I could breathe fire. I felt like breathing fire on him, so infuriated was I. But as soon as I saw the reproach in his eyes, my mouth cooled. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

We stared at each other for a long moment, but then he said, “Very well,” and stormed back upstairs.


	3. Chapter 3

The air was crisp and clean in the Wood, unmarked by dust and debris and sharp words. I used a transport spell to get myself back to the clearing where the cottage stood, and I smiled sadly as I saw a couple of walkers waiting there with some fresh fruit they had brought. I accepted it and patted their heads, and they scampered off happily.

I stepped into my cottage and laid on my bed, thankful for the soft, silent comfort of it. I was safe here. Safe enough to cry. So I did, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what I was crying for. Sarkan was back, which was the only thing I’d wanted for myself all year. Why then, did it make me want to hide in the earth and not come out again?

I had come to some sort of understanding as I’d stared at the bloodstain, though I hadn’t dared voice it to Sarkan or even let him guess at it. But how he’d explained his experiment and the sight of the bloodstain had made me realize something dreadful. The abyss had only appeared when I’d been nearly killed in the speaking of the _Summoning_ , when my contribution to the spell had suddenly wavered, leaving a great gap between the magic and the speaking. The abyss was there because I had nearly been destroyed in the process of a great working.

And Sarkan knew this. It was the only explanation for his ability to recreate the circumstances. His use of the word _destroy_. . . that he had destroyed one of the two artifacts involved in the working to recreate a smaller version of the abyss. He had, in a way, destroyed me, or a representation of me.

I realized that this is what he was here to do. He had no need for the tower anymore if his work was now in the capital. I had the Valley under control, and the Wood was no longer a threat. But he had been part of the working that had called the abyss, too. He was likely still drawn to it in some way. He wanted free, I knew it—free of the tower, free of the Valley . . . free of me. He hadn’t come back in the way I’d always hoped, looking for me and what we’d had together, nebulous as it might have been. He’d come back hoping to cut me out of him entirely.

I tried to ease my heart by reminding myself of my work, all that I’d accomplished, and the contentment I’d found in the Wood. It did little to help. I fell asleep in my tears, forgetting to eat supper, and awoke the next morning with my eyes swollen and groggy. I probably looked horrendous.

All the better. He deserved to be offended by my appearance. It would only make it easier for him to leave.

The only good thing that had come in the night was the chance for my dreams to untangle my thorny thoughts. I had words to explain better what I’d been thinking about the abyss the day before. I doubted Sarkan would find them satisfactory, but at least it was something.

I took my sweet time doing my little chores in the morning before using a transport spell to get to the tower. Sarkan wasn’t in the room with the abyss, but, reliable as ever, he was in his library, sifting through the mess and chaos with a sour look on his face. It was one of the least damaged of the rooms, though the window was still shattered and the bookcases were still littered with arrows and dust. I muttered a cleaning cantrip under my breath and made a good deal of dust vanish. He looked up at me in shock.

“I can do them, even if I usually don’t bother,” I said in response.

“Your eyes are red,” he remarked.

I lifted my eyebrows in acknowledgement but did not care to explain.

“The spell you showed me to carry things,” I said as I began to pick up books and set them in a pile. I didn’t bother trying to sort them, since I knew I’d get his system wrong.

“What about it?” he asked.

“Is that not an abyss of its own?” I asked. “A place set apart from time and space, if not being?”

Sarkan opened his mouth as though to argue, but he closed it again. After a moment he said, “That’s one way to look at it. Unconventional, but not wrong.”

I held up my fingers in a triangle. “Time, space, being. That’s what we’re dealing with, isn’t it? You said yesterday it’s elementary—most spells involve manipulation of one or more of these elements. But usually not all.”

“Not usually, no.”

“I don’t think the pit downstairs is a true abyss.”

Sarkan resumed plucking arrows out of the bookshelves, clearly disgruntled. If I was right, it would mean he’d been wasting his time, after all. “What makes you say that?”

“I think it still has being. Because if something . . . if something ceased to exist, you would have no memory of it. It had never been, never would be, then how could you even think it up, ever remember it?” The words were bitter on my tongue, but I forced them out anyway. “We were able to remember the _Summoning_ , able to invoke its magic, even without the book containing the spell. If the book had fallen into a true abyss and lost its being, then there never would have been a _Summoning_ in the first place.”

Sarkan’s eyes narrowed as he considered this. “Unless the spell were written elsewhere. It would still exist then.”

I fizzled a bit. I hadn’t considered that. “But would it be known to us? If we had never seen _that_ book?”

Sarkan sighed. “I have to say I appreciate the line of thinking, but if anything still existed inside the abyss, at least _one_ of us would have been able to draw it back out.”

“Not if you were using the wrong kind of spells.”

Indignation caused Sarkan to stand upright, but when he looked at me, and then at the library, he remembered the same thing I did. He immediately dropped the arrows he’d been holding, grabbed my wrist, and dragged me downstairs. I let out a reproachful yelp, but then followed him in grudging silence.

Once in the great hall, he sat me down on a large piece of stone, his hands pressing into my shoulders. Then, he took a sconce that laid discarded on the ground and pitched it into the hole. “Now bring it back,” he said.

“I didn’t even get a good look at it!” I protested.

Sarkan huffed and said, “Fine. Just help me, then.” He sat beside me and took my hands roughly in his. He began chanting an illusion spell, trying to bring up the image of the sconce he had just thrown into the abyss between us. I curled away from his magic at first, tried to pull my hands away, but he held tight. And then I remembered just how dearly I had loved sharing magic with him like this.

I began to hum underneath his chanting, a song I didn’t really know but which felt right. Between us, the sconce began to form, chipped and battered as the real thing had been. My magic and Sarkan’s played off each other, dancing a fine turn, and the sensation was like breathing again after being underwater for a long time. It was intoxicating, so much more potent than I remembered. My heart and my body remembered this, remembered how it made me feel toward him. I cherished his pen-calloused hands around mine, holding me tight; loved the firm structure his spell built; embraced the smooth baritone of his voice chanting the words. It was like coming home. My mind’s eye conjured not the sconce, but his bedroom. My mind’s ear heard not his chanting but the way he had moaned my name that night.

And I was heartbroken.

I gasped and snatched both my hands and my magic away before Sarkan had finished the conjuring. The illusion snapped like a bowstring and the sconce dissolved into the air.

“What in _damnation_ —” Sarkan seethed as I jerked bodily away from him. I didn’t let him even sort out what had happened before I ran up the shattered staircase to my own narrow room. Away from him—all I needed was to be away, but I could not muster my strength to retreat as far as the Wood.

I gasped for breath as I sat on the edge of my bed, gripping the frame of it for dear life. A few muttered cantrips made the room habitable again, and though I barely felt the strain, I trembled nonetheless.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t work magic with him, not without destroying myself little by little. I could not let myself grow attached to him, to his magic, knowing that he wanted to cut me out of his life and that this was only temporary. The moment this abyss was fixed, he would leave again and never look back.

But wasn’t I just making it worse for myself by prolonging it?

I groaned and buried my face in my hands, bending over at the waist.

“You fool! Do you want to explain what you thought you were doing?”

I didn’t even look up at Sarkan standing in my doorway, tall and lean and irked.

“I haven’t cast a working with someone in a long time,” I said in a hollow voice. “I’m out of practice.” It was a lie, and not even a good one. I could tell he knew it.

“It was working perfectly,” he insisted. “It would have _worked_ , and our problem would have been solved—”

My sardonic laugh cut him off. I lifted my face and saw him looking utterly nonplussed. I supposed I had never laughed at him like that before.

“Would you like to explain what that atrocious sound was?” he asked softly, angrily, when he composed himself.

“Maybe when you explain why you’re really here, Sarkan,” I answered, rising to my feet.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, you can lie to yourself, but I know,” I said. Despite my best efforts to keep my hurt and betrayal below the surface, it came pouring out now, triggered by the mingled use of our magic. “That abyss is tying you to this tower because you were part of the working that helped create it. And you don’t want anything to do with this place anymore, with me. But you need me to help you get rid of the damned thing. So you’ll use me until you don’t need me anymore, and then you’ll be able to move on and forget me like you’ve been wanting to.”

Sarkan’s eyes and mouth were agape, and dark anger glittered in his expression. “This is corruption talking,” he said to himself. “I’ve never heard you speak this way.”

“It’s not corruption!” I nearly shouted. “Is it so impossible for you to imagine that I might care about what you do, how it affects me? I’ve been a forgotten girl all my life. It might have been my salvation in the past, but now it’s destroying me and—and—you’re _destroying me, Sarkan!_ ”

I almost clapped my hand over my mouth in horror at what I’d said, what I’d confessed. He was clever enough—he would be able to piece together what those words meant, what they revealed about me.

I expected him to scoff, to scorn me, to call me a foolish child with a flair for the dramatic. I did not expect him to stride the two paces between us, seize my hands, and push me against the opposite wall. He pinned my wrists to either side of my head and growled, “Do I seem like a man who wants to _forget_ you?”

Then his mouth was on mine, hot and hungry and searching. And despite my anger and hurt, unspeakable relief flooded through my body and I kissed him back. His hands released my wrists to caress my jaw, my neck, and my hands in turn tangled in his hair. His body pressed insistently against mine and I gasped into his mouth, inhaling his familiar scent. My leg rose to hook around his hips, and then his arms were around and beneath me, lifting me away from the wall and spinning me toward the bed, which expanded to accommodate us. He laid me out on my back and climbed atop me, holding me down with a hand upon my shoulder as he continued to kiss me senseless.

His free hand slid up under my shirt, and a muttered cantrip whisked it away, leaving me bare-chested beneath him. The hand on my right shoulder traced the scar above my breast, and Sarkan pulled away to glare at me, wrath and pain in his features. “You think I could _forget_ carrying your bleeding body out of that room?” he demanded. “You think I could forget trying to keep the _Summoning_ going when all I wanted to do was call your name?” He bent down and kissed the scar. “You think I could forget how weak I was without you?” He whispered the last words onto my skin and I trembled beneath him.

Moments before, my body had been burning with a rage so hot it had been like being aflame with fire-heart. But his words were a balm all over my skin, and I was burning now with a different kind of fire. His mouth had moved from my scar to kiss all over my breasts. His fingers traced them delicately, as he would trace the pages of one of his precious books. But I couldn’t—I couldn’t let him try to erase my fears.

“You left. Why did you leave, if not to forget me?”

One of his hands was traveling up my leg beneath my skirts. “I don’t know,” he sighed, pressing his cheek to my chest as his fingers came too close to where I wanted them.

It wasn’t good enough. I placed my hand over his through my skirts and drew it away. He looked up at me, confused, as I wriggled out from under his body. “I can tell you why,” I said. He blinked expectantly, eyes still glazed with desire. My blood still pounded, but I would not submit to his touch. Not before he could admit his own truth. Not before he stopped hiding.

“You’re afraid,” I said, and he drew back as though I’d slapped him. He sat up on his knees, staring at me as though he could not believe what was happening. It was nothing he had prepared for. “You’re afraid of what it means to love someone other than yourself and your magic. You’re afraid of the unknowns, the unforeseen variables. You’re afraid of anything that doesn’t fit into your idea of the way the world should work.” I drew in a breath and continued. “You’re afraid of this,” I gestured vaguely to the air between us, “because you can’t understand it.”

“I very well do _not_ understand,” he snapped. His chest still heaved, but his face had gone cold once more. “How could I begin to understand your convoluted mind?” I met his gaze, unamused, unwilling to accept the diversion or to let him turn it around on me. “What do you want? Do you want me to bring you flowers? Recite you poetry? I am not some village boy with nothing more interesting to do than imagine pathetic, uncreative compliments, you silly girl!”

I let out an offended noise. “ _Vanstalem_ ,” I muttered, covering myself again. I clambered out of the bed, preparing to make yet another escape. “I don’t want any of those things,” I told him.

“Then what?” he demanded.

My expression was cold enough that he seemed to blanch a bit as he took it in. Then I said in a level, chilling voice, “It wouldn’t hurt if you would call me by my name once in a while.”

I left the tower then, with no plans of ever returning.


	4. Chapter 4

Three days passed, and I relished the silence. The days prior had not been what I’d expected at all, and it took some time for me to adjust to my disappointment. Just as I had been forced to face what I had always known about Sarkan, I also had to face who I had become in the past year. I had thought that I would be able to welcome him with open arms and a warm smile, that we would simply be able to exist together again without any difficulty. But I should have known better. He had always been difficult. And he would say the same about me.

I wasn’t at all surprised that he didn’t follow me to the Wood. I counted on the fact that he wouldn’t, and I allowed the thick trees and humming life to be my sanctuary, a place where I could soothe my soul. If he truly wanted to find me, he could, but I doubted he would want to. Likely he had simply gone about his own methods of trying to eliminate the pit in the middle of his tower and written me off as a failed attempt.

I returned to my own work, letting the walkers guide me to the nearest spot of corruption in the Wood. I cleansed the heart-tree, burned up the source of sickness in the grove. The walkers thanked me with a pile of fruits outside my cottage door when I returned home.

I was called away once to investigate fears of corruption nearer to Rosya, and it took a day of spelling myself across the distance to arrive and find out that the problem was no more than a common malady sourced in mundane spores from local fungi. I’d offered some healing tinctures, helped clear the patch that was growing too near to people and livestock, and made my way back across the Wood to my home before anyone could offer me shelter for the night.

I felt cleansed by the work, by the effort of helping people. It reminded me that there was more to me and to my world than Sarkan’s whims, even if his presence held significant sway over my heart. I told myself that if I simply returned to my work diligently, Sarkan would eventually leave again, escape my notice, and I wouldn’t have to be hurt by it. It was disappointing not to have my daydreams come true, but it didn’t have to be any more than a disappointment. I thought myself silly for reacting the way I had. What power did he have to hurt me, truly? Only as much as I gave him. If I took that power away, then . . . well, I would be fine.

I stepped through the air and arrived back in my clearing, a small smile lifting my lips at the flower I held in my hands—a gift from one of the young girls in the village I had visited. It was a little cluster of baby’s breath. The soft and delicate flowers were hardier than they appeared, and they would continue blooming until first frost. They would make a beautiful decoration in my little house.

I was so focused on the flowers that I didn’t even look up until a heard an offended yelp before my cottage. My eyes snapped up and I saw several walkers daring about the ankles of a tall and slender figure, who was attempting to kick them away.

“Shoo!” I said to them, hurrying over. They looked up at me with blank, glowing eyes, but they stopped fussing as soon as I approached. Seeing my lack of alarm, they scattered and lingered at the edge of the clearing, watching carefully. “I’m sorry,” I said to my visitor.

“Nonsensical creatures,” he muttered in reply. My stomach clenched and I staggered back a step. It was Sarkan— _here_ , in the Wood! How had I not recognized him?

And why had he come?

The work I had done the past few days in trying to erase him from my mind went up in smoke, because as he stood to his full height and scowled at the clearing, a trace of the setting sun illuminated his face, drawing his handsome features into stunning clarity. He glanced down at my flowers, then at me, and lifted one eyebrow in question.

I didn’t bother to answer as I brushed past him. “What did you do to the walkers? You didn’t set anything on fire, did you?”

Sarkan scoffed. “Those _things_ set upon me as soon as I approached your . . . house,” he said. He cast a pointed look at my tree cottage. My fingers clutched tighter around the stems of my flowers as I pushed down the instinct to feel self-conscious about what I had made for myself. I loved it, and it didn’t matter what he thought about it. It shouldn’t matter.

I left the door open behind me as I filled a jar with water and stuck the flowers in, setting them near the window. He didn’t follow me in, so when I had finished I returned to the threshold and looked out at him, arms crossed over my chest. “Why are you here?” I asked. “Can’t we just be done with this?”

Sarkan narrowed his eyes. “I ask myself that every day.”

I only glared at him.

He sighed. “I came to . . . apologize.” His lip curled up at the last word, but I could tell that it was due to the rarity with which he pronounced it, not a lack of sincerity. His mouth fell into a solemn line, and there was something deep and searching in his eyes. He didn’t try to come any closer to me. I swallowed and tried to make myself say something, but I waited like a rabbit in its burrow for signs of danger. “I am sorry that I didn’t listen to you,” he continued. His throat bobbed, and it was very apparent that he had practiced the words. “I am sorry that I made you think I was using you. And . . .” he drew in a deep, shaking breath, “I am sorry I left.”

The words hung in the air between us until he began to shift in discomfort. I saw a defensive retort rising in his throat, a way for him to salvage his own dignity, but I stopped it before it could escape his lips.

“We need to talk,” was all I said. I gestured to the inside of my house. He hesitated, only for a moment, before walking inside and ducking beneath the low eaves. I left the door open for the sake of my little walkers, then busied myself using cantrips to heat up a tea kettle and brew something soothing.

“I have never seen someone use magic in this way before,” Sarkan said as he slowly lowered himself onto a bench at my table, which I had grown from the roots themselves. “It shouldn’t be _possible_.”

“I’d offer to show you how I did it, but I doubt you’d approve,” I said as I pulled down my only two teacups.

“I doubt your demonstration would shed any light on the methodology,” he said. “It’s different every time you do it.”

My gut twisted in reluctant pleasure at this simple acknowledgement. “Fair enough.” I added the tea leaves and offered him the cup. He nodded his silent thanks as I sat across the table from him.

“Your little friends aren’t gossips, are they?” Sarkan asked, raising an eyebrow. “I have a reputation to maintain, you know.”

I shook my head and gave a little smile. “Heaven forbid the Dragon ever be caught apologizing.”

“It’s quite out of character for me.”

“I know.”

We paused, each busying ourselves with our tea for a moment. Sarkan took a sip of his and I saw the corner of his mouth lift as he enjoyed the flavor.

“You were right,” he said after a brief silence.

I blinked in surprise at the words. “ _Two_ impossible things in a day!” I gasped.

He scowled at me. “Don’t ruin this.” I smirked and waved at him to continue. “I did leave because I was afraid. It wasn’t _all_ that,” he said, his shoulders tensing in defensiveness. “I had legitimate business to attend to in the capital. The corruption had slipped in under everyone’s nose, and it was a trial attempting to identify all its hiding places. The work is still not quite done.”

“You might have written. Kasia did.”

“I’m aware. That is where the fear comes in.” He laced his fingers together and set them upon the table. He stared down at them and flexed his jaw. “It has been a very, _very_ long time since I’ve had to say I needed anyone else. Even the . . . the other girls. It wasn’t _them_ I needed—just their ties to the Valley. But you . . . my magic likes yours. I’m sure you’d agree that, recent events notwithstanding, our magic mingles nicely.”

 _Nicely_. It was such an inadequate word, but I nodded my agreement nonetheless.

“It didn’t feel right that I should rely on someone else, that I should allow myself to grow comfortable with it. Ours is . . . not the typical master-apprentice relationship.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” I said wryly. He sighed.

“It was troubling to me that I was still drawn to you, when the life of a wizard is best served solitary. And it seemed unfair to you to keep you, when your potential could so easily lead you away, to your own purpose. It seemed wisest to part ways, and I never wrote because I did not want to prolong that separation to a point where it would be painful for either of us.”

My brow creased as I considered his words. “Painful? You mean to say that you—”

Sarkan huffed. “As if it weren’t obvious.” He saw the confounded expression on my face and his own visage turned sour. “I’ve been attached to this Valley for a century and never felt any particular fondness for it. Did you think I came back for the cherries?”

I felt my face reddening, but I couldn’t manage to speak.

“Ah, that’s right,” he said. “You accused me of coming back because of the pit in the tower. That _is_ a problem that needs solved, but you were wrong, Agnieszka.” He paused and drew in a breath as though to steady himself. “I’m not drawn back here because of the pit. I’m drawn back here because of you.”

My heart sputtered at the sound of my name on his lips, even if his words held reproach. “You don’t want that, though,” I said. “You don’t want to be drawn to me. You don’t want roots. I know this. I have known it since before you left. So what other explanation could be drawn on my part but that you came to clean up loose ends and go on your way? What was supposed to make me think any differently?”

“The fact that I’ve kissed you? Several times, by now?”

“I thought you were trying to distract me.”

Sarkan’s smirk was maddening. “Did you find it distracting?”

I huffed in indignation and accidentally kicked the leg of the table. The vibrations ran through the floor and walls until little bits of dirt shook loose from the ceiling. Sarkan cursed under his breath and brushed it off his shoulders. But when he looked back at me, he wasn’t flustered. He simply said, “Quite frankly, I am not sure what I want anymore.”

My shoulders sagged. “Neither do I.” The confession felt as though a weight I had been carrying around my neck had suddenly lifted. I had made myself busy—I had done good work. I loved the Valley and the Wood, but there was little to my existence that fulfilled any internal desire. Not like . . . not like Sarkan did.

I wanted to curse my foolish heart.

“Please return to the tower with me,” Sarkan said. “Despite my best efforts, I really do need your help to get rid of that thing. I considered your theory and its implications. I believe that before we can have any hope of sealing up that hole, we need to draw the _Summoning_ out. I can’t do that by myself.”

“And what then?” I asked. “Shall we just part ways? Pretend that whatever is drawing us together is some fluke that will fade with the centuries?”

Sarkan shook his head in small exasperation. “I would rather not worry about that. What if we focus on the problem we _can_ fix, for now? The rest . . . I imagine the rest will follow suit.”

I was skeptical, but the honest request in his face made me consider his offer. I had told him that there was no great mystery in the abyss. Perhaps there was no great drama there, either. Perhaps I had conjured it out of my own fears.

Regardless of what would come in the future, the abyss was standing between us now. Neither of us would have peace until we had resolved it. That much I could agree upon.

“I’ll come tomorrow,” I agreed. “It’s a bit late now.” I peered out the window into the quickly fading sunset. “You . . . you’re welcome to stay, if you’d rather not travel back now. I can grow another bed.”

Sarkan looked at me like I had grown two heads. “ _Me?_ Sleep in a _tree?_ ”

I only laughed, but this time it felt good—it was not a sound of choked-down pain, but something freeing and light. “I should have guessed. Safe travels, Sarkan.”

He rose and stepped out of my tree cottage. He walked into the clearing, eyeing my walkers as distrustfully as they eyed him. But he paused in the center and turned back to look at me standing in the doorway. “Good night, Agnieszka.” He drew in that peculiar breath again. Then he closed his eyes and vanished.

I fell asleep memorizing the sound of my name on his lips.


	5. Chapter 5

Sarkan had made himself busy in the days I’d been in the Wood. The walls around the tower were either repaired or entirely dismantled if there had been no way to save the. The pockmarks left by cannonballs in the stone were smoothed away, and the front doors were back to their usual magnificence. When I entered through them, the pit greeted me on the other side. Sarkan had cleared the worst of the debris. I wasn’t surprised—he would never have been able to leave his living space a mess.

Though the place was clean, there was some intangible scar that lingered. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel a tension in the place, as though the tower itself would not rest for fear of being attacked again the moment did.

“There you are,” Sarkan said, appearing the doorway leading to the stairs. His coat was a simple unadorned black today, and his hair wasn’t combed back. Instead, it fell to his jaw in a straight line, framing his face in a way that somehow made him seem more youthful.

“Are you hiding one of those creatures in your hair?” he asked. His voice held no malice—only teasing that I could almost consider affectionate. I brushed my hand over my head and found a twig sticking out of my thick hair. It could, in fact, be mistaken for the limb of a small walker. I didn’t blush, only plucked it out and tossed it over my shoulder and out the door.

“This isn’t what I expected,” I said, stepping closer to the pit. There was still no breeze, no sound. It seemed more like a pool of ink spilling over the stones, welling up from where the dais had once stood. But I knew if I stepped over it, I would fall to who-knows-where, perhaps never to return.

“I know what you mean,” Sarkan said, moving closer to me—but not too close.

“It doesn’t even feel like a threat,” I said. I would expect something of this nature to want to consume and corrupt, rather like the Wood had, but in all this time it had done no further damage.

“Perhaps not, but it is a damned inconvenience having a crack in the world in my reception hall,” Sarkan grumbled.

“You could always put in a stumbling cantrip at the threshold for unwanted visitors,” I teased. “Then you wouldn’t even have to come down from the library to send them away.”

The corner of Sarkan’s mouth twitched in reluctant amusement. “Tempting,” he admitted.

“I imagine you already having something in mind for this?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“Of a fashion. I’ve been thinking a lot about your magic. It’s . . . _peculiarities._ After I saw you shelter yesterday, it confirmed my idea.”

An unwelcome voice in my mind made me think that perhaps that was the real reason he’d come to the Wood—not to see me, but what I’d managed, what I’d been up to with my magic. Maybe it had been a trick to get me here. _No_ —I scolded myself. Sarkan might be infuriatingly aloof at times, but he had never been a trickster.

“What idea is that?” I asked.

“I don’t even have a name for your kind of magic,” Sarkan said with an irritated frown. “Somehow, you can will things to happen just by believing in them hard enough.”

“Sounds right,” I said with a casual shrug of one shoulder. Sakan looked at me, aghast at my nonchalance.

“That’s not _normal_ ,” he complained. He shook his head, exasperated that I didn’t seem to understand. In fact, I _did_ understand—I just didn’t have over a century of rules pounded into my head to care that I was breaking them. Sarkan sighed. “It _is_ useful, though. I first considered it the day you summoned me while you were in Kralia. You had nothing to work with, no spell, but you _made_ me inhabit your illusion.”

“Sorry,” I said instinctively. “I didn’t think it would work like that.”

“What were you trying to do?” Sarkan asked.

My brow furrowed as I tried to think of a way to describe it. “I needed something familiar,” I said carefully. “I was so confused and overwhelmed and angry that I needed to do and see something I recognized.”

“Why did you choose me, and not your village or your parents?” Sarkan’s voice remained casual, inquisitive, but the air between us stretched taut with tension.

“You knew the most about the Wood,” I replied. “I thought that if I saw you, my mind might put something together that I hadn’t seen before. It worked, sort of.” I looked sideways at him. “What happened on your end?”

“It was as though your magic was following me around, tapping me on the shoulder. And like its master, it wouldn’t go away until I paid attention to it.” Sarkan scowled and rubbed the back of his neck. “When I turned my mind to it, there was . . . path. To you.”

His face flushed at the admission that he _had_ seen how my magic worked. “The second time, it was even easier. Once I was aware of your magic, all I needed to do was turn around and find myself where you wanted me.”

“Again, not exactly my intended outcome, though I was gland of it in the end,” I said. “I was trying to get us to the tower, but the spell wouldn’t work right unless I imagined you there. This place . . . I suppose it’s not the same to me without you in it.” I self-consciously ran my fingers through my hair; naturally, they got caught in the tangles.

Sarkan did not say anything in response to my confession. “It might be possible,” he said carefully, as though his words would break something, “for you to imagine the _Summoning_ out of that pit.”

“Why do you want the _Summoning_ back?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t I?” It’s extremely valuable,” Sarkan answered curtly.

“Oh. Of course,” I said.

“I also suspect this thing won’t close while the _Summoning_ is inside it. It may be granting the gap power by its mere presence.”

I nodded distantly. I couldn’t put my finger on why I was disturbed, but I began to shift on my feet. “I’m willing to try,” I said. “Just . . . later.”

“Why not now?” Sarkan asked impatiently.

I gave a shrug. “It won’t work right now.” I didn’t bother trying to explain why—even I didn’t know.

I didn’t flinch from Sarkan’s examining eye when he turned to me. But, after a long moment of silence, he nodded—a simple jerk of his chin. “Tell me when you’re ready.”

Some of my malaise faded at his easy acceptance, but not all of it. “I’m going up to the library if you . . . if you want to join me.”

Sarkan gave me a look that said, _It’s_ my _tower, you ridiculous girl_ , but he simply replied, “I have some work to do as well.”

I turned and walked up the stairs, not in flight this time. I almost smiled as I heard Sarkan’s boots keep time with mine against the stone while we ascended together to our most familiar place.

* * *

 

It was nice for a while, sinking into our old normal. It wasn’t entirely the same—far too much had changed between us, and we were both keenly aware now that nothing could ever truly be the same again. But for a little while we let each other forget that. Sarkan continued taking stock of his shelves, occasionally muttering under his breath when he found something out of place. I returned to the cabinet where I’d stowed the books like Jaga’s. It was comforting seeing those pages laid out before me again—I’d come into something like my own magic over the past year, cut from the same cloth as these spells, but it was nice to have their guidance again. I had a lot to learn, after all, and I would have a lot of time to do it.

Sarkan disappeared once or twice to check in on some potions he’d started brewing, but he always returned. He used _lirintalem_ once to provide us food to snack on, but neither of us said much to each other except “Pass the cheese,” or “Have you seen Gurin’s _Diagrams_?” As the afternoon passed, the odd discomfort I’d felt earlier began to fade, and I started to feel almost like I was at home again.

Sarkan never showed any impatience. He simply let himself fall into his work, focused and intent as ever. By the time the sun was beginning to edge to the west, he had had set nearly the entire library right again. He vanished once more to check his potions, and this time, for some reason, I noticed.

I sat up in my armchair and folded closed the book in my lap. I twitched, unsure of why I was suddenly more alert and more aware of what Sarkan was up to, when I’d been able to comfortably ignore him most of the day. When he finally came back upstairs, he paused in the doorway, and we locked eyes.

I opened my mouth to say something, but he began to speak first. “I want to retrieve the _Summoning_ from the pit because I want to cast it with you again,” he said without preamble.

I blinked and stiffened. “What?” I scanned him with my eyes, a frown tugging at my mouth. “What do you expect to find? Do you really still think I’m corrupted?”

Sarkan shook his head, and his unbound hair feathered outward. “I don’t want to find anything. I want to _show_ you something.”

I shifted closer to the edge of my armchair. “I don’t follow.”

“You still don’t entirely trust me,” Sarkan said. “I can’t say I blame you. I am not sure it will change much of anything, but I want you to see me in the _Summoning_ -light.” He ran his hand through his hair, flexing his jaw. “There are things . . . there are things I simply do not know how to express. Perhaps this will help clear up some of the misunderstanding between us.”

“I don’t think you’re corrupted,” I said. “I know you’re not.”

Sarkan’s lips twisted in a wry smile, but it quickly faded. “Corruption is not the only sort of truth that can be hidden.”

My brow furrowed and I set my book aside. “I suppose you’re right.” I stood to my feet. “Shall we?”

He blinked, surprised that I would respond so quickly. Now that I thought about it, this was likely what we had both been building toward all day—the need for honesty and clarity. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but I knew I’d started to feel off when Sarkan had claimed that he only wanted the _Summoning_ returned to him for its value. It had hurt, I realized, when he seemed to dismiss the spell’s importance to both of us. It had saved us both, and many others, many times. To have it return to the shelf as nothing more than a well-priced artifact seemed . . . wrong. Knowing that the claim had only been Sarkan’s attempt to maintain his air of aloofness made me feel a bit better—even if knowing that he still felt the _need_ to put on such an air with me was frustrating.

But I realized—if I wanted a Sarkan who wouldn’t frustrate me, I didn’t want Sarkan at all.

I followed him down the stairs to the hall and found that he’d set up a table and cushioned chairs for us a safe distance from the edge of the pit. “Take some time to get comfortable,” he said, gesturing to the table. I knew he didn’t only mean the chairs.

I took my seat and let my magic start roaming the hall, getting reacquainted with the nature of the abyss before us. Sarkan didn’t interrupt—he only offered his magic as a guiding force to mine. His magic didn’t push mine in any direction. It simply kept mine from wandering off downstairs or leaking out the windows. I appreciated the stability he offered. I always had, ever since we first started using our magic together.

When I felt as though I had a good understanding of the place and the magic there, I started prodding at the abyss itself. I started wandering about it, looking for a trace of the _Summoning_ within its depths. Though I remained seated with my eyes closed, my spirit was with my magic as it slowly lowered itself into the blackness. Sarkan’s magic provided a tether for me, and his soft murmuring was an anchor.

Then, deep in the dark, I saw a glimmer of light. For a terrible moment, my memories tried to drag me back to that moment when the heart-tree had swallowed me, and only the guiding light from Sarkan’s independent use of the _Summoning_ had been able to guide me. Sarkan sensed my sudden distress, and his chanting became a little louder as he added reinforcement to my exploring magic. Blindly, I reached across the table for his hand. He took it in his, and our magic started to weave together like a tapestry.

I returned to my searching and moved closer toward the _Summoning_ -light. My heart cried out for it, and for the first time I allowed myself to think about what it might mean if we could have it returned to us. Sarkan said he wanted to show his truth to me. I didn’t know what I would see—would it terrify me? Hurt me? Heal me? I had never wanted to know something about him so badly. Whatever it was that he had difficulty expressing, I wanted to see it—and I wanted him to be free of the burden of trying and failing to reveal it.

Beyond that, I found a surprising desire within myself to show him _my_ truth. I had never been so closed-off as he had been. I wore my fear and my sorrow and my joy like the dirt that always clung to me. And yet there were things I was sure he did not yet know about it, and that I’d been afraid to show him. Did he know how badly I’d craved his touch since that first wild kiss in the library? Did he understand that I both desired and feared him, even after all we’d been through? Did he know his name tasted like smoke and embers on my tongue? All of this and more I wanted to share with him, but I had no idea how to begin to do it. Words had never been our preferred way of communicating—but magic had.

My drive to find the _Summoning_ intensified, and I wanted it with all my being to come out of the pit and appear on the table beneath our hands. I cast out my magic into the darkness, hooking on to that glimmer of light and pulling with my magic in a way I’d never tried before. Around me, Sarkan’s magic gave me footholds and hand grips and anything else I needed to find my way in the dark. When he sensed me starting to pull, he reinforced my strength, and together we pulled at that light, drawing it from the depths of apparent nothingness with the combined power of our magic.

Eventually, I had the sense that I had climbed out, though I couldn’t quite remember how I’d done it, or been aware of it while it had happened. I was aware of myself sitting at the table again—felt the cushion beneath me, and the table under my elbows. Sarkan slowly began drawing his power away, and I did the same. It was a familiar dance, and when it was finished, I let out a contented sigh.

“Agnieszka,” Sarkan rasped. “Look.”

I opened my eyes. Between us, nestle beneath our joined hands, was _Luthe’s Summoning_.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarkan uses the Summoning to show Agnieszka the truth of who and what he has been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a beast of a chapter, but I've been building up to it for a while. I hope it delivers!

We both exhaled as we beheld the gilded book sitting on the table between us, as though it had never been gone. I didn’t release Sarkan’s hand as I raised my other to trace the spine of the book. Quiet awe filled the air between us—neither of us had been _really_ sure that we’d be able to accomplish such a feat. I wetted my lips and pressed them together, still feeling slightly undone from the use of my magic . . . from mingling my magic with Sarkan’s again.

I made to open the book, but Sarkan held my hand down with his. “Not now,” he said. He released my hand and stood from the table. Beyond him, the gap in the floor still yawned open. Retrieving the _Summoning_ had not closed it.

I stood up, too, leaving the book on the table. “Why not?” I asked. My voice was quieter than I intended.

He looked me over, his dark eyes almost soft. “No need to be profligate,” he said. Then, to my utter shock, he reached out and pushed a wayward lock of hair behind my ear. His hand lingered near my cheek, and his mouth opened slightly as he became appalled with himself. He cleared his throat and drew his hand back. “You’ll need to rest first.”

He wasn’t wrong. The weariness was catching up to me. “I’ll stay in my old room tonight,” I said.

A flicker of surprise darted across his features. “Good,” he said. “Spelling yourself back to the Wood is be the opposite of resting. I’m glad you’re finally displaying a bit of sense.”

I shook my head and gave a little half-smile as I stepped past him. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said. He didn’t stop me as I climbed up to the narrow room that had been mine for several months. I sank onto the bed, staring absently at my own hands. I could still feel the ghost of his upon them. I could even feel his hand still hovering near my cheek.

I shifted in unease on the bed. The last time I’d been here . . .

I huffed, grabbed my pillow, and made a different bed for myself near the hearth.

I couldn’t calm down enough to rest. Though my magic was coming back to me in a slow trickle, my body and mind wouldn’t calm. All I could think about was Sarkan and _The Summoning_ and all the things we were avoiding. It was well after dark by the time I sat up, attempted to tame my hair, and headed back downstairs.

I’m not sure how I knew that he was still in the library, but I did. Perhaps we were still connected by the magic we’d used together earlier. Whatever the case, I knew I would not have to climb upward to his tower room to find him.

I lingered at the threshold when I reached the library. He was not seated at a table or in one of the armchairs. Instead, he sat upon the fur rug before the fire, staring into the dancing flames as if they held the secrets to the world. Beside him, the gilt cover of _The Summoning_ flashed in the firelight. Sarkan sat with one knee up, an elbow draped over it. The other leg was casually curled before him. As he stared into the fire, he nibbled on the edge of his thumbnail—such a mundane, messy sort of behavior that seemed so unlike him.

He didn’t look up as I crossed the room and placed myself cross-legged on the rug beside him. I couldn’t begin to fathom what he might be thinking about as he stared into the fire—it had been both our friend and foe in our battle against the Wood. Sometimes I still woke up at night from nightmares in which I was one fire, pinned down by the Wood-queen’s brittle hands. It was not enough to make me fear fire entirely, but it was enough to change its character for me.

We didn’t say anything for a while, but then Sarkan moved. He scooped up my hand and held it between both of his. He looked me dead in the eyes, his expression stony. “I’m afraid,” he confessed. “I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”

“I won’t judge you for what I see,” I said.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t judged him the day he’d told me about Ludmila, the affair he’d had with her. I wanted to tell him that I’d seen too much by now to change my opinion of him altogether. But . . . I realized he was right. I had no way of knowing what secrets laid beneath that scowling face, those dark eyes. I could believe the best all I wanted, but even my magic could not make the best be true. So I simply nodded quietly. Sarkan opened the book with one hand, still clutching mine with the other, and spread it before us. The sight of the beautiful script tugged at my heart. I hoped I wouldn’t hate it after tonight.

I shifted my position to sit more comfortably beside him. “I’m ready,” I said. He nodded.

He began to lift the words from the page with his voice, and as soon as the familiar strains met my ears, I found a place to join in, to fuse my magic with his. It was different than the last time we’d cast it together—the book seemed aware that we had both changed, and our magic staggered a bit as it found a new way to dance the complex motions of the spell. Sarkan squeezed my hand in those moments, but I was there, offering up my magic to the working, chanting words when it felt right and humming a melody beneath his rhythm at other times.

When the working began to take shape, it felt like a rare flower blooming before us. I hadn’t felt magic this intense in a year, and my heart ached at the memory of it. At the same time, I loved it—I loved the exhilaration, the beauty of it. Glancing sideways at Sarkan, I saw the slight lift of his mouth, and I knew he loved it, too. In fact, he loved it so much that when we reached the part of the spell that would open up his secrets, he did not blanch from it. He just kept chanting, his eyes turning from the fire to settle on my face..

Before me, in the cool light of the working, the library faded, but not quite. We were still in the library, somehow, but it also seemed as though we were farther away, viewing the room from a distance, from outside the tower. All around Sarkan I saw walls of stone, perched high and lonely on the side of the mountain. He stood within the tower, staring coldly out at the world beyond it, arms crossed over his chest. It took me a few moments to understand what I was seeing. The tower—it was Sarkan’s own Wood. It held him, the way the Wood had held Kasia and Jerzy. But this was a self-selected prison.

I lifted my free hand to touch Sarkan’s cheek before me—the real him, not the vision of him. Or so I thought. But when I touched his cheek I was hit hard by a wave of coldness, rebuffing me, trying to push me away. My magic stumbled, and Sarkan gripped my hand tighter and spoke the spell louder, reminding me that I was experiencing something else, something not corporeal. Hidden things. Perhaps unfathomable things.

The tower had grown cold despite the fire roaring beside us. The spell-vision of Sarkan’s eyes was cold, unfeeling—even hateful. Reflected in them I saw a beautiful woman’s face: ivory skin, high-cheekbones, thick dark hair that framed her face in practiced elegance. Her lips smiled, and her eyes glowed, but behind them I could see something else—something calculating. Before me the beautiful woman turning shrieking and waspish, that buried threat rising to the surface. Another wave of cold pushed against me, but I held my ground and kept watching.

I felt Sarkan’s ache like it had been born in my own heart. He had never revealed to me how deeply Ludmila’s betrayal had struck him. I had not known him well enough to read pain in his eyes or look any deeper than the casual way he spoke her name. But this coldness—it had been strengthened by her.

But not borne by her. It had been there, already, hiding like a coin abandoned in the dark corner of a moneylender’s shop. It had been placed there when he was a mere child. Perhaps it was even a remnant of the coldness that had first provoked him to warm himself with magic and nearly burn down a whole village—that had first made him realize that he would never be like the others.

The coldness had been nursed by years buried away in Charovnikov, under the harsh and watchful eyes of other wizards, none of whom I recognized. No affection, except from one or two fleeting faces. There was praise, and plenty of it, but it was nothing more than self-serving appraisal as each figure who passed through his life considered how they might benefit from him. The cold had survived even his naming, when the title of The Dragon had summoned fire and smoke and set him apart as the most powerful.

Then Ludmila. The cold pushed against me again as I watched him kiss her, watched him fall for her and crave what he mistook for genuine affection, only to have her crush that trust in her fist. The cold was not a small inhabitant of the Dragon’s heart anymore. By the time he retreated to the tower, he was nothing but coldness.

Cold fire, I realized. Cold enough to burn.

I shivered, and before me the illusion that danced behind Sarkan’s eyes flickered, and I was able to glimpse his true features again. I found my resolve there, and I continued to watch, even as it became even more painful.

The first woman came. It had been uncommon to speak the names of the Dragon Girls once they’d been taken. It was deemed inappropriate at best and dangerous at worst. But the first woman, Nadzieja, arrived, young and fearful but full of the vitality granted by a life in the Valley. She was from Zatochek. She cried often, for weeks on end, but the Dragon spurned her, unfeeling. Eventually she made her own way, unknowing that his magic was using her as a conduit to weaken the Wood. And as the years passed, the vitality that had made her tears flow and her cheeks redden had quieted to something cold and imperious.

The coldness was its own corruption.

My heart ached as I watched it happen again and again and again. Nadzieja, Beatrycze, Dorota, Franciszka, Jadwiga, Daria, Gabriela, Malina, Martyna, and Olga. I only knew their names from their own lips—the Dragon himself rarely voiced them. None of them were greatly different from each other, but each their own soul. Girls bred in the Valley were similar in the way that anyone from a town is similar. And no matter how the years passed, each of the Dragon Girls came, raged, settled, and cooled. Each of them, at the end, was no longer a girl of the Valley. All connection to it had been drained away by the Dragon in his need to contain the wood. And there was no mercy.

Only Jadwiga stood out. I saw a moment in the black expanse of Sarkan’s eyes in which he crumpled a letter in his fist—the letter informing him of Ludmila’s death—only to turn and find Jadwiga there, dressed in finery and eager to please him . . . in whatever way she could.

As he’d been with me, the Dragon had been stunned at her approach. But before she could so much as touch him, the coldness that had been reinforced for decades spurned her, shoved her backward out of the room. The door slammed behind her, and another row of stones was added to the walls around the Dragon’s heart.

I was reminded of my fears when I had first come here, that he was draining my life force away when he tried to teach me magic. It had not been an entirely unfounded fear. He stole a little of the life away from each of the girls by taking away their roots to the Valley. But most of all, he’d long ago let all of his own vitality drain away. He merely existed, fulfilling his purpose but finding little joy in any of it. He was . . . lifeless.

Then came a late summer that I knew all too well. I recognized the trees, the way the wind moved through the Valley. And I recognized myself, standing in a line with a dozen other girls, all terrified to know our fate.

I couldn’t remember it in my own mind, but as I watched the scene in the _Summoning_ -light, I felt the coldness accompany the Dragon as he arrived in Dvernik. It washed over us all—his magic seeking out the strongest tie to the Valley. I flinched at his cold appraisal of Kasia, heard his mind say _At least this one wouldn’t be a fright to look at_. But then . . .

Fire.

Only it wasn’t fire, not really. It was me, lighting up like a beacon beside Kasia, holding on to her for dear life. My magic, unseen and unknown to me or anyone else, thrumming to life at the threat of what I loved being taken from me. I watched the Dragon test me, make me take the cold flame he summoned. I watched us vanish.

I wanted to pull away. I suddenly didn’t want to know what he’d seen when he’d looked at me—a dirty, pathetic, simple girl with power I had no way of comprehending. An affront to his senses. But through the haze, Sarkan’s dark eyes begged me to hold on—just a little longer. I kept offering my magic to the _Summoning_. I listened for his voice as though it were coming from another room, and I clung to it. I kept watching.

He tried to avoid me. Tried to rebuff me with his coldness. But he _couldn’t_. The need to train me forced him to bump up against my blazing magic every day. For a while I didn’t even see us—only cold fire and flailing, loose magic evading its burning touches. For lack of kindling, the cold fire peeled back. Sarkan’s curiosity, perhaps the only thing stronger than the cultivated cold, began to emerge again. Began to see me.

I saw little I didn’t already know then. I frustrated him, intrigued him . . . I was like the other but so unlike them, all at once. He could not use the same techniques he had perfected over a century. I was breaking his rules. I was . . . I was still living.

That was when I saw it. When _he_ saw it. When I fled to Dvernik, unwilling to let my home go undefended . . . he saw for the first time a spirit that defied his expectations. And I never, never faded. Not when the Wood rose up, not when my friend was nearly lost . . . he saw a passion burning so bright that he had no way to handle it. And, for the first time . . . some of that coldness began to fade.

He fought it. He clung to it. I watched his vision-self build up more rows of stone that only crumbled away when I crashed into them. I felt his wave of cold rise up and then ebb as I entered the room on the trail of my own magic. Soon . . . he stopped trying so hard.

The _Summoning_ -light flashed brighter and clearer when the day we cast our illusion together came. The wonder of it, pure and intoxicating, ripped away his defenses as he was caught up on the same high I was. As, for the first time in over a century, he felt warm. Not just warm, but . . . _hot._ Fiery. As though whatever bright fire I carried with me had contaminated him, and he lost himself in it, in the crush of our bodies, until . . .

. . . that wave of cold forced its way between us, shoved us apart.

I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks. Even Sarkan’s hand in mine felt far away.

Then I felt a brush of something against my neck. I realized, through the complex working that filled the room around us, that it was Sarkan’s other hand pressing there. Steadying me. His head was nearly bowed—I could only barely see his eyes now. My hand on his cheek swept down below his chin, and I lifted it upward so I could see his face. His expression was tormented in a way I hadn’t seen since the day the heart-tree had tried to take him when we’d been rescuing the queen. I swallowed down my tears. It was almost over.

All around us, through the vision, I saw the events of last year, but none of them were what the spell was bringing to light. We’d seen that, lived it. The _Summoning_ would not make us do so again. Instead, I saw what was hidden—Sarkan’s relief when we’d made it out uncorrupted; his begrudging fascination with my magic. And . . . the way he had responded when I spoke his name for the first time. _Sarkan._ It licked across his bone like hot flames, igniting something in him that he had ignored for decades. But he had hidden it.

He’d missed me when I’d gone to Kralia. The coldness, his old friend, tried to creep up in my absence, but he evaded it. He focused on his work, but kept me in his thoughts. He rarely spoke of me to Vlad or the others with whom he worked. But I saw him in the library the day I’d claimed my name.

He had been alone, sifting through an old tome, when my name— _Agnieszka_ —sounded through his bones with a power he’d been unprepared for. “That _incomprehensible creature_ ,” he muttered to himself. “Keeping her own name—”

But he was shaking, his eyes wide. He licked his lips, looked about the room. “ _Agnieszka_ ,” he said to himself. A pained expression crossed his face—he was nearly panicked. He sank into a chair and wiped his hand across his face.

I didn’t understand.

There was an unexpected flash of joy as I witnessed what he’d described me as I’d summoned him. Even he had not been prepared for the relief he’d felt when he’d seen my ash-smeared face. But the burning Wood had called him away, long before he’d gotten his fill of me.

The rest passed by too quickly for me to see clearly, but I’d seen it all before. Instead, my other senses were engaged. My heart seemed opened wide, experiencing all of Sarkan’s emotions as though they were my own. The fear, the pain, the anguish . . . the desperate devotion.

Not of lick of it. I hadn’t seen any of this in him.

The scene slowed long enough to showcase the intense feeling of that night in his bed. I heard myself groan, and the sound filled an empty space in the working as though it were meant to be there. Sarkan was gasping with exertion, but he refused to let the working fall apart now. The chaos in the tower flew by—I felt the terror he’d described when I’d been shot, felt it threefold when the queen shoved me into the heart-tree . . .

There was no trace of the coldness anymore. It had died, been slaughtered by my presence and Sarkan’s pull to me. He didn’t even think twice when he drank from the Spindle, drew upon the last of his strength to cast the _Summoning_ and bring me out of the heart-tree again.

I began openly crying when I felt with keen certainty that he was willing to burn himself out to bring me back. He would be willing to wither and die if it meant that my magic could continue lighting the world.

He’d _wanted_ to die with me.

But he survived. We both did, and he didn’t know what to do. He’d been so prepared to end it all, to cease existing so that I might go on . . . he hadn’t prepared for _after_. Just as I hadn’t. So he came up with the only solution that made sense to him. Pretend he _had_ died. Leave me to become what I might have without him. Keep that coldness far from me, for he didn’t trust that it was entirely gone.

But he was a moth to my flame. Despite his desperate desire to leave me to my own devices, leave me to be better off without him . . . he had been unable to stay away. He couldn’t stay away. Not now. Perhaps not ever. He had followed me into the Wood to find me, when he’d sworn to himself he’d never set foot there again. And now he held me tightly, begging, maybe even praying, that I wouldn’t flee from him again. That he wouldn’t regret showing himself to me, that I wouldn’t be repulsed by the lifeless thing he’d been—that he feared he’d be again.

None of this was what I had expected to see. I felt him start to unravel the working—he was exhausted, both in his heart and in his magic. But I couldn’t let him go without giving him something in return. I made him look at me, and I opened myself to him, showing him my fear, my loneliness, my insecurity. I let him know how his name tasted on my tongue, what his hands felt like on mine. And I let him know that I didn’t think my life would truly be full without him in it, in whatever capacity he could be there. Neither of us had to be alone anymore.

Tears ran from his eyes as our joined spell slowly faded around us. Soon, we were both back in front of the fire. The book had been cast aside, and we were sitting so close that his legs were bent on either side of my hips, and mine were in a tangled knot between us. Our faces were so close that our foreheads nearly touched.

The spell left us in heavy silence. Only the crackling of the fire helped us realize that we were in the corporeal world again.

Sarkan let out a long, weary sigh. Then, raw and exhausted from his silent confession, he laid his head against my shoulder and cried.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarkan reveals why he rarely speaks Agnieszka's name.

My fingers combed through Sarkan’s dark hair as he cried into my shoulder. I had never imagined him crying—I’d never even prepared myself for the possibility. But of course, he was a man, after all. A wizard, but a man nonetheless. I pressed my cheek against his head and let him cling to me as the burst dam of emotion poured out of him. His fingers dug into my upper arms where he held me, but I did not flinch away. I cried, too—silently. I felt like I’d been hollowed out and scraped clean. The use of the magic had left me dazed and disoriented. If not for Sarkan clinging to me, I would not be entirely sure that I had left the vision of the _Summoning_ behind.

“Do you loathe me?” he rasped after several minutes of quiet. “Am I appalling to you?” He shifted and looked up at me, his swollen eyes baleful.

“No,” I said honestly, my hands drifting to hold his face between mine. “I saw. I understand.”

“ _I_ hardly understand,” Sarkan said bitterly. “A century of life, practically wasted, and for what? Fear?”

“Fear is powerful,” I said to him.

“I should have been stronger.”

I wanted to say that yes, he should have, but he knew it well enough. And I couldn’t honestly say that I would be any different, if my background had been like his.

“I was such a cold, dead thing. I fear I still am. And you are . . . you are life itself. Messy, uncontainable, unfathomable . . . you crashed into my semblance of a life and made me _live._ Made me care about something again. Even when I hurt you, when I scorned you. And you did the same for everyone else you touched. I couldn’t understand how you could so freely give of yourself and never waver, never break or give up. You . . . you are so brave, Agnieszka,” he sighed, closing his eyes. He shuddered and almost sighed.

“Why . . . why do you struggle to say my name?” I asked. “That is the only thing I do not understand.”

Sarkan sat up, but he did not move away. Instead, he moved his hands from my arms to gently cradle my neck. “The name of a witch or a wizard is not a mundane thing,” he said. “You knew me as The Dragon all those years because to speak my name in the language of magic grants power. Rather like one’s pet name.”

“Oh.” I blushed. “I didn’t realize it was so informal.”

“It isn’t, not like that,” Sarkan said. “But it is rare to know a wizard’s name. It is often only shared amongst ourselves and our superiors. Close friends, if we happen to have them. Magic can act up if a wizard’s name is used too liberally, so we go by the translations—Dragon, Sword, Willow. It protects us and the people who call upon us.”

“There’s magic when I speak your name,” I said, confirming his words. “It tastes like smoke and fire—feels like flame upon my tongue.”

Sarkan’s brow furrowed. “I know. You—you showed me.”

“Is that not normal?”

“It’s not unheard of . . . but the potency—that’s the unusual part.” He moved one hand from my neck to push back some of the hair that had fallen in his face. “We are given new names when we are confirmed to keep our old, familiar names from wielding too much power. Too many people knew those names—it could be dangerous to have them spoken widely and casually once magic was tied to them. You, of course, have to care for such precautions.”

“The bell didn’t give me a new name,” I told him, “and I didn’t want one.”

“So Alosha told me,” Sarkan said. “It makes sense for you. Your magic doesn’t like structure, or rules. It practically rejoices when it is given free rein to do as it pleases. That it should be widely called upon whenever someone from Dvernik—or indeed, anywhere in Polnya—speaks your name is no surprise.”

“But you?” I asked.

Sarkan’s lips pressed tight as though he were bracing himself. “You revealed that my name tastes like fire upon your tongue. I feel it, when you speak my name—a kind of pull. But it’s worse when I say _your_ name.” He sighed and closed his eyes again. “Do you know what your name tastes like to me?” he asked.

My throat tightened. “No,” I whispered.

Sarkan’s fingers began tracing patterns upon the skin of my neck. All but a shred of my focus went there—the rest remained on Sarkan’s words. “It tastes like honeyed mead that has been fermenting for centuries . . . so refined and pure that one sip alone can make you drunk, make you drift away on euphoria so sweet that you never want to return. It tastes like cinnamon and ginger and nutmeg, apples and brown sugar. It tastes like a home I never had.”

Sarkan’s fingers paused at the base of my throat, and I could feel my pulse racing beneath his touch. “Every time I spoke your name—before and especially after your confirmation—I was ripped further from the prison I’d sealed myself and my heart within. Every time I said your name, I was drawn against my will out of the cold stone and into the sun. I hated it at first—that should be no surprise to you.” I gave a tiny nod of understanding, but other than that I remained still under his touch. “Then, I began to enjoy it. I found myself whispering it to myself in the night. And when you . . . when you came to my chambers that night, when you moaned my name, I had to respond in kind, and . . . I told myself it would be the last time.”

“Wh-why?” I gasped.

“Because I loved it far too much, and it was dangerous. For both of us. I knew what we would be facing, and I knew that if I let myself love the taste of your name—love _you_ —only to lose you . . . it would be a fate worse than the Wood itself.”

Tears were running down my cheeks again, and Sarkan looked stricken. “I can’t say your name,” he said, his voice hoarse, “because every time I do, I fall more and more in love with you.” He choked back a cry, then leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my tear-stained cheek. “Agnieszka,” he whispered, the word dancing across my skin like chaff over the fields. He kissed the other cheek. “Agnieszka,” he said again. Then, he rested his forehead against mine, eyes closed. “Oh, my _Nieshka_.”

A broken gasp escaped my lips, but Sarkan caught it with his. He kissed me, softly, so unlike any of the other kisses we’d shared before. His hands held my cheeks, fingers tangling slightly in my loose hair. I kissed him back, holding his neck to anchor myself. We broke apart only for a moment, and his dark eyes searched mine, almost as though he was checking to be sure this was real. “Sarkan,” I whispered. “ _Sarya_.”

The affectionate form of his name on my tongue was not just fire, not just smoke, but sunlight and rich, heady perfume. Though I whispered it, there seemed to be a great flow of heat with it that poured from me and washed over him. His mouth crashed over mine again, and this time we were caught up, swept away, in the intense heat of each other. His fingers tugged at my hair and I tipped backward on the fur rug, drawing him over top of me. I delighted in the weight of his lean body pressed over mine, smiled as his lips kissed all over my face, shuddered in pleasure as his hands made their way under my clothes.

“Agnieszka,” he murmured when we were bare and clinging to each other. “Nieshka.”

“Sarya,” I replied, my voice thin with desperation.

“Nieshka, I love you,” he said. He kissed my forehead and held me tight as we joined together for the first time in more than a year.

I could barely find enough of myself in the midst of the pleasure to reply, “I love you, too.”

Beyond us, the fire glowed bright, the sole witness to our confessions and our union. But that—it was all we needed.

* * *

 

I woke up the next morning with Sarya’s chest as a pillow. I was pleasantly sore, and my heart was filled to bursting as I saw Sarya’s face, peaceful and serene in the morning sun. We’d summoned blankets and pillows at some point during the night, and I knew I was more comfortable here than I would be in any bed in the tower—or perhaps even the whole Valley.

Sarya stirred beneath me, and I felt his lips touch my head. “Good morning, Nieshka,” he said softly. Something almost like a smile lifted his lips. I treasured it, just as I treasured the sound of my pet name in his voice. We’d crossed a threshold the night before—I doubted he would ever called me anything but Nieshka now, just as I would struggle to call him anything but Sarya. There was no use pretending we were strangers anymore, or that our souls weren’t tied in some way.

I didn’t fool myself into thinking this could be forever. It wasn’t fear that told me so. _Forever_ was a long time for people like us, and it seemed foolish to promise centuries when neither of us were powerful enough even to guarantee the next day. Forever might not be possible—but _now_ could also last an awfully long time. I took his hand in both of mine and kissed his knuckles. “Good morning,” I replied.

“I’m ravenous,” Sarya said, pushing up into a seated position. I followed him up, but kept my cheek pressed to his shoulder. “ _Someone_ cost me far too much energy last night.”

I smirked at him and kissed his shoulder. “You enjoyed it.”

“Of course I did,” Sarya sniffed. His arm wrapped around my waist and squeezed me tight against him. “I might even insist we do it again. But there’s no need to be _profligate_.”

I giggled and buried my face into his chest. If I wasn’t mistaken, his chest was shaking with silent laughter, too.

He hauled us both up to our feet and summoned blessedly simple clothes for us. We walked side-by-side down toward the kitchens, but we were both stopped short in the foyer.

The abyss was gone.

Sarya huffed. “Well, that’s just _irritatingly_ trite.”

I smacked his arm playfully. “Stop your griping. I can think of better things for your mouth to be doing.”

Sarya’s face whipped to me, an incredulous expression on his face. But before he could so much as demand, _What on earth are you implying, you impossible girl?_ I stood up on my toes and kissed him.

And this time I know I didn’t imagine it when he smiled against my lips and held me tight in his arms, closing the distance between us until we both glowed, hot and bright, and not a trace of cold remained.


End file.
